


Pretty

by Different_approach



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Biting, Conditioning, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Hair-pulling, Implied/Referenced Torture, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Oral Sex, Stockholm Syndrome, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 20:07:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15372339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Different_approach/pseuds/Different_approach
Summary: Lies are untruths. Jacob Seed doesn’t lie. There are alternative means of concealment, and revelation.





	Pretty

Jacob Seed calls him _pretty_ and Pratt can’t imagine it’s intentional. But maybe it is, because Jacob, for all his careful diversions, the garden paths he cultivates, the plotted manipulation of Pratt’s dreams and waking hours, is utterly sincere. He speaks only truths. Even if the truth is hard to stomach.

The Collapse is coming, and Pratt is too weak to be worth keeping. But he’s _pretty_ , even soaked with grime and sweat and frustration, seeping through his pores like corrosive bile. It’s been four weeks since he’s had a proper meal, slept anywhere but the concrete floor of his tiny cage.

Jacob trains him to be obedient, to come and stay and _beg_. He makes Pratt run through red-tinged dreams. An open field, a clear sky. The Judges at his heels. But Pratt is faster, running on four legs instead of two, long limbs and narrow bones. He screams and screams as he’s pursued. Jacob never says he must be quiet. Only that if he fails, he’s _meat_. Whatever that might mean.

One of Jacob’s guards grabs Pratt by the collar, dragging him out of the cage still on his knees. Jacob sits in front of him, waiting, on a metal folding chair, hunting knife in one hand, feet planted wide. 

Pratt doesn’t have the strength to climb to his feet. Doesn’t have the strength or size to tackle Jacob to the ground. So he sits in a limp heap, waiting to be culled.

Jacob taps the flat of the knife against his open palm, asking Pratt if he wants to be useful now? If he’s ready for his purpose? Pratt tries to hide his face in the crook of is arm, sobbing, “Yes,” but meaning something less than “Yes,” more than “No.” Yes, he doesn’t want to live like this. No, he doesn’t want to learn what survival entails.

Jacob repositions his work boots by a few inches, so they’re bracketed on either side of Pratt’s curled up form. He grabs Pratt by the hair and drags until Pratt’s shoulders bump up against the inside of Jacob’s thighs. Eyes tilted upward so he can’t look away from Jacob’s clear, deadened gaze. Pratt can make an educated guess about what comes next. Jacob called him _pretty_ , after all.

Pratt doesn’t move, waiting for Jacob’s next instruction. But he says nothing, letting the knife lay balanced across one leg, just within Pratt’s reach. He could grab it now, drive it deep into Jacob’s gut, twist and turn and scream until his entrails spill across the floor. Stain his own chest with blood and viscera, show Jacob he has a purpose all his own.

Jacob’s people would kill him, surely. But Pratt could die knowing he took a Herald with him.

Dropping his hand to Pratt’s face, Jacob rubs his thumb against his cheek, cradles his face in too-big, too-broken hands. Knuckles gnarled and mashed and scarred. Cut up, broken, useless.

Pratt starts to cry again, despite his best intentions. Fat tears rolling down Jacob’s dirty fingers. None of them will ever be clean again. Despite what their “Father” says.

But Jacob already knows that.

“That’s fine,” Jacob huffs at Pratt’s tears, “I don’t need you to be brave. So tell me, what are you good at? What are your skills?”

Pratt chokes on his anxiety, trying to keep himself from dredging up the water and bread and bile that make up the entire contents of his stomach. “I can handle a rifle,” he starts to list, “I can fly a helicopter, I know the terrain...I’m...loyal.”

“No you’re not,” Jacob says, touching his face again, “don’t lie. What are you good at?”

Pratt laughs, because he can’t think of anything else that will keep him from vomiting, “I’m good at not being very good at anything, fuck,” he can feel his eyes roll back, his head feeling light, body distant. He’s passing out. But he knows he’s losing consciousness. Knows that he’s falling, falling. Backwards into an abyss. Maybe Jacob will finally leave him to die, when he realizes Pratt isn’t very good at living.

But when Pratt wakes up again, he’s in a bed, wire frame, box spring, mattress, real sheets, a rough blanket thrown over him. The light hanging from the ceiling is just a bare bulb. He hears scratching somewhere nearby.

Pushing himself up, the blanket falls down his chest. He’s not in his filthy deputy uniform anymore. Though he’s still covered in grit and oil and ugh. But someone has dressed him in soft clothes, suitable for sleeping.

He turns his head, finding Jacob behind what must be his desk, drawing something out on paper. His movements are too wide and coarse to be words, so he must be sketching something larger on the oversized sheet in front of him.

“Joe says you are to be kept alive,” he says, barely acknowledging that Pratt is awake. “And so, I’ll keep you alive.”

Pratt bundles up the blanket around his midsection, as if it could protect him from Jacob’s ill-intent. But he has already said that he’s got to be alive. Though alive doesn’t mean well.

“Why?” Pratt asks, his voice dry and hoarse. He hasn’t used it much of late. When he screams in training, he’s not sure that his mouth actually moves, though when he wakes, he feels sore all over.

“Not your place to know,” Jacob grumbles.”Not mine either.”

Pratt looks back at Jacob, wide-eyed and more terrified than before. But Jacob won’t even meet his gaze, absorbed instead in the sketch in front of him.

“Did you go to college?” Jacob asks, still not looking up. His long fingers flip the page, letting it settle back against the desk.

“Yeah,” Pratt answers, rubbing his fingers through his greasy hair. It’s a tangled mess.

“Answer me properly when you’re asked a question,” Jacob corrects, scribbling something down again on the back of what he sketched.

“Yes, I went to college,” Pratt swallows hard.

“What did you study?”

“Criminal Justice….”

“What were your grades like?” he finally puts down his pen, leaning back in his chair and watching Pratt as he answers.

Pratt can’t help but snort, “mediocre. But I passed.”

“Good,” Jacob says, standing from behind his desk. “Follow me, do as I say. Don’t get in the way.”

Nodding, Pratt pulls away the covers. He looks for his shoes. Jacob gestures to the folding chair at the side of the bed, where Pratt’s deputy uniform sits clean and folded. But what’s the point, if he himself smells of death? Still, he changes in grim silence, but his shoes are gone. Jacob gives him a different pair.

“They’re too big,” Pratt tells him, before the laces are even done. His toes loose in the cavernous space he cannot occupy.

“Follow,” Jacob says, and Pratt comes to heel.

—

He becomes Jacob’s _pet_. And it’s becoming increasingly obvious why it’s important that he’s _pretty_. On the third day of his new position, Jacob lets him shower, and Pratt sobs with relief under the hot, Bliss-laced spray. The drugs are barely perceptible, just enough to make the peggies content, maybe. But Pratt feels a panicked high as the dirt comes off, keeps scrubbing himself until he feels raw, his skin prickling all over. Then he feels sick, like he has to force the Bliss back out. He struggles to keep his throat from spasming, quickly shutting off the water.

Toweling off his hair, he manages to keep from throwing up. His uniform, again, laundered while he slept last night in Jacob’s bed. Jacob nowhere to be found. His shoes are still too big and he’s forming blisters where they rub against his socks. But he hasn’t dared ask again for a different pair.

Jacob waits for him outside the bathroom, looking him up and down now that he’s presentable and dressed, tapping at the outside of his thigh to _follow_.

The cultists stare at Pratt now as he passes, his still-wet hair brushing against his shoulders, curling around his ears, his clean uniform, his cautious gait. The slash across his face from the crash is a permanent fixture now. But at least it’s scabbed over. Eventually, it’ll just be an ugly scar and not a gaping wound. He’s lucky, at least, that it never got infected, even if only now it is starting to heal.

Pratt does as he is told, following Jacob across the Veterans Center, nipping at his heels, taking notes, never speaking. Watching as Jacob’s subordinates watch him work. At first, he looks up over the clipboard to meet their gaze. But after catching them in the act fails to provoke them, Pratt gives up in trying to challenge their stares.

He’s not afforded a shower every day, but frequently enough. And that’s fine by him, the Bliss still makes him sick. After two weeks and four showers, Jacob asks him about the water.

“I don’t...like the Bliss,” Pratt answers honestly.

Jacob hums, admitting, “Neither do I.”

By the third week, Pratt is certain his observations are correct.

Jacob never fucks him. Never orders Pratt to suck him off. Sometimes, they share a bed, Jacob pushing him until he’s crowded against the wall. They touch but it’s not sexual, not even familiar. Pratt might as well be a sack of flour, as far as Jacob is concerned.

But, for some inexplicable reason, Jacob wants the peggies to _think_ that he’s fucking Pratt. And Pratt can’t wrap his head around _why_. Yet, it’s undeniable. Independence and special treatment. It’s in Jacob’s subtle movements, the way he steps in between Pratt and his lackeys when they stare too long, how he touches Pratt’s wrist or shoulder when they walk close together, how Pratt eats more now, how he walks the halls alone when Jacob meets with Joseph and Pratt can’t accompany him. 

How he brings Pratt into his bed each night to do nothing but sleep.

And it’s then, with Pratt sitting up in the bed they share, an open book in his lap. With Jacob flipping through reports delivered from the lodge earlier in the day. With the comfortable silence between them. Then, Pratt asks.

“Why me, instead of someone...stronger?”

Jacob looks up from the open folder fuzzy at the edges from being reused dozens of times already, the cardstock no longer crisp, “it will upset the deputy.”

Pratt closes his book, “I don’t think it will,” Pratt and the junior deputy only worked a few weeks together. Not much at all. 

“Oh,” Jacob says with confidence, “it will.”

Pratt lacks just enough common sense to continue, “But the Deputy isn’t here now. So why start rumors?”

Tilting his head, Jacob says, “Speak clearly, Peaches. Say what you mean.”

He huffs, screwing his eyes shut, as it that might protect him from the punishment sure to come, “You want the peg—the faithful, to think that you’re fucking me.” He opens his eyes again once the question hangs between them.

“Oh,” Jacob drolls, “you’re right. Clever.”

“Why?” he persists. Jacob doesn’t lie about anything else, as far as Pratt can tell. Sometimes, he refuses answers, but he doesn’t lie. “You’re supposed to be abstinent, right? That’s one of Joseph’s rules? So why are you lying...misleading? Is it because you’re fucking someone else?” Pratt’s throat tightens, thinking about all the nights he’s spent alone. Almost as frequent as the nights they share the bed.

“Jealous, Peaches?” Jacob teases, a half-smile curling at the corner of his mouth. “But no, guess again?”

Narrowing his eyes, Pratt floats another option, “You’re trying to anger your brother….I’m not sure why. You want to make him upset, because you’re not following his rules.”

“Would I really be here, if I didn’t want the same thing he does?”

It’s a question, not an admission.

“You don’t believe Joseph speaks to God.” 

Jacob shrugs his shoulders, “I can’t know if that’s true or not. It’s not about belief.”

Nervous now, Pratt snaps, “You don’t even believe in god.”

“Do you?” that’s a deflection, of Pratt ever heard one.

“Answer my question first.”

“I don’t know. Call me agnostic then. If it makes you feel better.”

Pratt starts pulling at his hair, trying to find a way to ground himself. The lights are too bright. From the bed, he can lean over and hit the light switch. So he does, plunging half the room into darkness. The only section left illuminated is by the lamp on Jacob’s desk. A halo of light in the dim room.

“Yes,” Pratt says, “I believe in god.”

Jacob clicks off the lamp on his desk, standing up and stripping off his shirt. All the nights they’ve spent together, Jacob has kept himself covered, despite the encroaching heat. There’s just enough light coming in through the barred window that Pratt can see the scars across Jacob’s chest, the burn mark that mangles his face, continuing down his neck, flaring bright and tortured over his pec before giving way to other atrocities. Pratt’s eyes go unfocused, trying to blur the lines.

Crawling into bed, Jacob pushes Pratt down until he’s flat on his back, staring up into the face that has haunted him for months. Dreams and waking hours. An ever-present ghost. Haunting. Haunted. Hunted.

Jacob twines his fingers through Pratt’s shorter ones, dragging his hands to the side of his head and pinning them to the mattress. Hovering over Pratt, he leans in, breathing, “you want the rumors to be true, Peaches? That why you bring it up?”

Pratt bites the inside of his cheek, but it’s not enough to keep him quiet, “I asked because I want to know.”

“And what will you do with that knowledge? Run and tell on me to Joe? See me strung up by my fingers for disobeying? Let John carve my sins into my skin? Cut them out? Can’t you tell it’s already too late for that?”

Pratt swallows hard. Jacob’s body rocks heavily against his, their groins rubbing together through the fabric of their sweats. A slow friction that makes his head spin. Jacob smells of mint toothpaste, salt, gunpowder. 

He tastes of trepidation when Pratt cranes his neck to kiss him, taking what Jacob meant to hold as ransom. 

Jacob’s mouth twists into a kind of fury as Pratt breaks the kiss, letting his head settle back down against the mattress. His eyes wide and pulse quick.

“You’re trying to tempt them,” Pratt says, understanding now, “you’re seeing who disobeys you first. Tries to steal from you. You think there is a traitor in your ranks…someone trying to hurt you.”

This time, Jacob’s smile is wide, appreciative. Pratt has guessed right. “Clever, Peaches. Maybe you are good for something.” He lets go of Pratt’s hands, sitting back onto his heels. The front of his sweats still tented with arousal, he palms himself until he’s fully hard, the outline of his cock long and thick.

“But why only pretend?” Pratt asks, “you could force me.”

“Think about it some more,” Jacob says, pushing down the waistband of his sweats to pull out his dick. It’s darker than the rest of his pale skin, flushed, cut. He strokes himself slowly, out of Pratt’s reach. A taunt.

Reason, reason, there has to be a reason, “They want to hurt you. They don’t really want me. It’s just to get at you….for your plan to work, whoever it is, has to think that we care about each other. That it’s not just fucking. Forcing yourself on me would just make me unhappy, ruin the illusion.”

Jacob lets go of his cock, instead surging forward, cupping Pratt’s face in his hands and bringing their mouths together. “Oh, you’re good,” he coos, pulling back.

“And you’re a bad liar,” Pratt whispers, pieces falling into place, “you picked me, specifically, because you were already attracted to me. Made it easier, to pretend.”

“So good,” it sounds like a promise, before Jacob kisses him again, his cock rutting between their stomachs as Jacob grinds against Pratt’s shirt.

Power, Pratt realizes, this gives him power, that Jacob is already a little fond of him. Maybe he can’t get out, escape the music box. His conditioning. But he can make his life here more comfortable. Find freedoms he wouldn’t be afforded otherwise. His mind races as Jacob starts to stroke himself, tongue invading Pratt’s open mouth. 

It doesn’t feel bad, Pratt thinks. He could do this. Give Jacob what he wants, participate in this little plot to its conclusion. Power means safety. It doesn’t matter that he is weak. He can use Jacob’s strength to keep himself afloat.

“Let me help you,” Pratt offers, “I can help you.”

Jacob grins, “and how might you do that, Peaches?”

With shaking hands, Pratt shoves down his own sweats, twisting underneath Jacob’s gaze until they’re past his knees, “Let’s start with this,” Pratt says, taking hold of his own erection and working it quickly until it fills completely. It doesn’t take more than a few strokes. He can’t _not_ want this; but he also doesn’t _not_ want Jacob. “Something slick?” What they use isn’t important. While he has control, he can at least steer some of Jacob’s desires down avenues of least harm.

Jacob curses, climbing out of bed to sort through one of the packs tucked into the corner of the room. He fishes through the pockets until he pulls out a bottle of lubricant. Pratt wasn’t expecting much and he’s not sure the surprise is welcome.

Even so, he takes the offered bottle, dribbling lube over his hands before smearing it between his thighs. Jacob sits at the edge of the bed watching, running his fingers over Pratt’s still covered chest. 

“Take off your shirt,” Jacob says, “I want to see you.”

Pratt makes the concession, it’s easy enough to strip bare. Kicks away his sweats once and for all while he’s at it, before turning around and flopping onto his stomach.

He hears it as Jacob pops open the cap again, probably to slick his cock, before climbing over top of Pratt. Rubbing his slick hand down Pratt’s spine, he drifts his fingers into the cleft of Pratt’s ass, nearly brushing against his hole before Pratt reaches back to grab his wrist. “Between my thighs, okay? Like it better that way. Promise I’ll be good.”

Jacob dips his head low, pressing his mouth against the side of Pratt’s exposed neck, his breath hot against Pratt’s skin as he grips his hip with one hand, curling all the way around the side, fingers digging in. He spreads his thighs on the outside of Pratt’s, letting him balance his weight on his knees. With his free hand, he guides his cock between Pratt’s legs, slipping it into the warm junction of his thighs.

“Like this, Peaches?” he asks, dropping his lips to the other side of Pratt’s neck, mouthing until it tickles, waiting for a response. Even without being inside of Pratt, he feels fucking huge. Hot and slick with lube, he rocks gently, trying to coax Pratt to answer. “Sure you can hold out? Sure you don’t want it _in_ you? Promise I can be _good_ too,” he rasps.

“Next time,” Pratt says, squeezing his legs tight around the girth of Jacob’s cock. 

Positioned properly now, Jacob moves his hand into Pratt’s hair, holding tight enough to pull but not to hurt, as he starts thrusting in between the soft flesh of Pratt’s thighs. “Bet you’re even softer inside.”

And for a terrifying moment, Pratt thinks that Jacob is inside his head, reading his next move before he can make it, but no, no, it’s just idle dirty talk. Jacob being verbal, filthy, because next he says that Pratt has a nice cock, that if he’s good, Jacob will touch it, make him come.

Pratt groans, because the friction of his dick trapped against the mattress won’t be quite enough to bring him off. As much as he likes the sensation of Jacob’s wet cock running along the underside of his, stroking against his balls and the warmth of Jacob’s body over top of his. He needs something _more_ to come. He’s not expecting it from Jacob but, god, that sounds nice. To have those big hands stroking him to completion.

“Bet you’re even prettier when you come,” Jacob increases the pressure to the back of Pratt’s head, shoving his face down in the mattress as he ruts. Pratt tenses his leg muscles, carefully rocking back so that his ass slams against Jacob’s pelvis each time they come together. 

Jacob bites into the meat of Pratt’s shoulder as he comes, a sticky mess clinging to the inside of Pratt’s thighs. Without hesitation, Jacob grabs him by the hips, flipping him over onto his back before fisting his cock again and working out the last remnants of his cum to spill out across Pratt’s stomach.

But Pratt is still hard and aching, a little shell-shocked too. He reaches down to touch himself, before Jacob bats his hand away. Frustrated and unfulfilled, he’s ready to snap at Jacob to at least allow him this, horrified that Jacob might not let him come. But more quickly than he can protest, Jacob descends on him, wrapping that smart mouth around the head of his cock and hollowing his cheeks.

“Oh god, oh god, ohgodohgodohgod,” Pratt pants, thrusting shallowly into Jacob’s mouth and reaching to grab his hair. The world spinning, spinning. How is he already out of control again?

Jacob works the majority of Pratt’s cock down his throat, bobbing with practiced ease. Pratt is so on edge that he already feels the tendrils of his orgasm curling around his limbs, through his groin, threatening to tear him apart and leave him at Jacob’s mercy.

“Jacob, JacobJacob,” he tries to warn, before his toes curl and he comes down Jacob’s throat. He doesn’t swallow, getting up to spit into the trash can. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before grabbing up Pratt’s discarded shirt and tossing it back towards him to clean up.

Pratt wipes his stomach first, then between his legs. Throwing the shirt aside, he’s speechless, numb, trying to find a thread that he can stitch into something akin to armor.

“Gonna leave you alone tomorrow,” Jacob says. On his back, he stares up at the ceiling. Pratt rolls over just enough, to drop his head onto Jacob’s shoulder. “Report back to me, who looks at you. Anyone who talks to you. Need to know.”

“This is how I prove my usefulness?” Pratt asks, wanting to make sure.

“No,” Jacob can’t help but be sincere. And Pratt knows he’s safe for now.


End file.
